Media Downplays Romney’s NRA Speech

Mitt Romney spoke yesterday at the NRA convention in St. Louis and received a warm welcome from the attendees, but the media did its best to downplay Romney’s appearance.

James Hohmann of Politico was one of the biggest offenders when he wrote about the venue and what he thought was the NRA’s plan to make Romney’s speech sound bigger and better than it actually was.

Here is what Hohmann wrote;

Romney spoke in the cavernous stadium where the St. Louis Rams football team normally plays. The dimly-lit venue was divided for the conference to make it feel smaller and less empty. High ceilings meant Romney’s voice echoed around the arena.

Hohmann made it sound like this was some kind of tactic that the NRA had set up juts for Romney’s speech, when in fact this type of venue has been used for years, starting in 2008 at the US Airways arena in Phoenix. As for dimly lit, Hohmann didn’t realize that the stage lighting was set for daylight for the television cameras and to accentuate all the speakers rather than have them being washed out in a sea of stadium lighting. Hohmann would know this if he had actually attended previous NRA meetings which he obviously hadn’t.

Maybe Hohmann was feeling a bit put out though by the time Romney stepped up to the stage. The two previous speakers, Chris Cox the executive director of the NRA-ILA and Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the NRA made withering attacks on the mainstream media for their coverage of the gun issue and challenged the audience to let the media know who they really were.